Elvington 2000….another airshow I can’t really remember much about but I’ll bang the photos up even though they are terrible! Seems I got to watch a display from 2 x Mirage F1s, bet that was awesome but I cannot bloody remember any of it!
Also there was a Hurricane in a fetching night fighter black. Not sure I saw one again until this year when the BBMF painted one of their Hurricanes in a similar fashion.
We also had a Jag in the flying display. Jags were common as muck when I was a lad. They’d come blasting over the N York Moors, always in pairs. Now I’ll probably never see one flying again – can’t imagine India bringing one to RIAT!
Canberra WK163 was there in its all over silver finish. Next time I saw this machine was also at Elvington but this time in the black undersides/grey topside scheme. Beautiful aeroplane and very photogenic.
I went into the museum whilst I was there to see the Halifax. I remember getting mega excited when I read a copy of Bomber Command News (whatever happened to that??) which had an article about this ‘restoration’. I’m working from memory now but if I recall correctly the 4 x working Hercules engines came from the French Air Force (Noratlas??) the fuselage had been recovered from the Orkneys after serving as a chicken coop and the wings were from a Hasting?
Anyway, it was the only Halifax you could see in a museum apart from the one down at Hendon which is great but I wish they’d gone one way or the other with it. The restored front turret looks completely out of place when compared to the rest of the wreck which has been left as is apart from application of some product which prevented further deterioration. Of course, if I were to post this opinion on an aviation forum I’d be told in no uncertain terms that my opinion was wrong and I am disqualified from having an opinion on this airframe unless I owned it.
I have very vague memories of this airshow. It was one of the first outings for my new Canon 35mm film SLR with it’s 75 – 300mm zoom lens which I thought was the bees’ knees until I whipped it out in front of geeks who wouldn’t remove a lens cap off anything smaller that 100 – 400mm. Still, you are pretty close to the action at Elvington so it sufficed for my limited aspirations at that time. I hadn’t passed my driving test at that time so I must have got a special airshow bus from Leeds or York to the airshow.
I really didn’t have a clue with aviation photography back in those days but everyone has to start somewhere, right? Also of interest, when I got these processed I also got digital copies on a CD which seemed pretty exciting at the time!
I used one roll of film for that airshow – 36 exposures! You can fire that off shooting a single aeroplane now with digital – indeed sometimes up in the stands I hear people shooting on high speed loose off about 50 shots on a single pass in a monstrous spray and pray fashion.
2004…the year I got my first DSLR. I’d been diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year and during treatment decided to cheer myself up by banging a Canon 300D and on my credit card (£724.99) after seeing it in an advert. I hadn’t even realised you could get digital SLRs before then! It was a thing of wonderous beauty and really took my passion for photography to another level. Until I just looked back now I’d forgotten it was a grey import hence getting it for £724 with lens and 512 mb CF card, bit of a bargain at the time. I had the kit lens that came with it for statics and then my old 75-300mm zoom for the flying. Again, still had no idea what I was doing but digital really gave me the opportunity to experiment a bit. Absolutely loved that camera! There are nearly 300 photos in my Elvington 2004 folder, bit of a step up from the 36 I took at Elvington in 2001. Much of what I took was rubbish but there were a few keepers in there. I think I went with my girlfriend and my mate but I’m honestly not sure which is pretty terrible of me but it was almost 20 years ago!
I remember being super excited to be getting really close to lots of aviation on the ground and shooting with the new camera. Elvington was such a relaxed environment, a really open and friendly airshow where you could get to see everything without too many crowds getting in the way and the runway was really close to the crowdline – different times!
It looks like the first item I photographed was the ground running Victor they have there which I believe is/was owned by Andre Tempest. The Victor did some great fast taxi runs which included the deployment of the drag chute, always a crowd pleaser.
The first flying item I shot was the T28 Fennec. This particular example saw service in Algeria with the French Air Force. This is the only half decent pic I got of it. Interestingly I was shooting at F16, 270mm focal length at 1/200 sec ISO100. F16? Not sure what led me to want that level of DoF but again I was just learning.
T28 Fennec 51-7545
Next on my flying shots was Hawk XX261 which had a sporty little stylised Union flag on its tail, it must have been flying very close to the crowd for me to get a nice topside shot like this
Next up two dirty great big piston engined carrier borne torpedo bombers from the US of A
SkyraiderAvenger
There followed an impressive display by an Extra300 which I got some shaky, out of focus photos of – the below shot is about the best of a bad bunch
After the Extra I shot the BBMF which sent Spitfire LF IX MK356 IN D-Day stripes, Spitfire Mk IIa P7350 and the Lancaster
Next up, an aeroplane I always liked but I still think I vastly under-appreciated – if I could just go back in time and see it again! The RAF sent Tornado F3 ZE812 to the show and what at the time probably felt like a subdued paint job now seems like an explosion in a Dulux warehouse compared to the current in service aircraft with the RAF. Photos 2 and 4 I think really convey that feeling of being there …it’s coming for you…. the momentary silence before the noise catches up and hits your eardrums. The F2 and F3 really were stunning aircraft in my opinion, much cleaner lines than the GR1/GR4. Halcyon days reading about the F3 coming into service in Take Off magazine and now it’s ancient bloody history, a bit like me.
After the F3 came the Jag and perhaps an example of an aeroplane even more under appreciated during its time in service by yours truly. Walking along the North Yorkshire Moors I’d often see a pair of Jags come blasting overhead and whilst I certainly got excited, there was a certain ‘another pair of Jags’ feeling, secretly hoping it would be something more exotic and preferably American. F*ck me they used to fly low though! Lower than the JPs, A10s and Harriers IIRC.
The Jag at Elvington 2004 took off and presumably did a display but it seems I only got pics of take off and landing so I’ll give you one of each and for added authenticity the latter has part of the arse end missing, What a proper little sports car the Jaguar was. The first picture I saw of it was in my ‘What Plane is That’ book I got when I was very young and it blew my tiny mind even back then that it had OVERWING SIDEWINDERS!
The final jet I photographed at Elvington 2004 (presumably it was closing the show) was a Harrier which was often the closing act back in the day, wowing the crowd with V/STOL etc. This Harrier was ZD408 which subsequently crashed near Cottesmore, writing the machine off but thankfully the pilot safely ejected.
Elvington 2004 definitely reignited my passion for airshows with the new camera. Now I could get home and immediately get disappointed at my photos rather than having to wait a week to get them developed then cry over how shit they were. And of course now there were hundreds rather than 36! I got a couple printed in A3 and stuck them on the wall at work. Whilst I wasn’t around a colleague asked another guy (keen photographer) at work if they were good pictures. “They’re crap” he replied. The message was gleefully relayed to me :-D. To be fair, I did get some good shots among the garbage and I began to want to understand how I could improve my digital photography which meant numerous posts on forums and a lot of experimentation. Getting the magic balance between focus, light, depth of field and sharpness is a constant battle where skill is a huge part of the equation but let’s not forget it does help to also have expensive lenses. An L series 100-400mm Mk 1 was the limit of my budget – it was a massive step up from the really old 75-300mm previously used on my film SLR but then it’s another step change again to L series 500mm or even 600mm which will open up another world of options to you. But an L series 600mm would be worth a lot more than my car!
There were more Elvington airshows to come and as you will see in subsequent posts they became bigger, better and with an added dimension from my perspective! Keep ploughing through the Elvington posts to find out more dear reader!
Having done my first Royal International Air Tattoo back in 2006 and been impressed at the scale of it I’m surprised it took me so long to make a return visit. I have a feeling I may have considered 2008 but decided against it and as luck would have it the airshow was cancelled that year. I was however very jealous of the people who were already down there who got to see the F22 Raptor do it’s first public display in the UK on the Friday. I looked at some pics on the web and maybe a couple of short videos on YouTube and could not believe what I was missing!
The following year, often called 2009, I decided to get my ass to RIAT <to paraphrase Arnie>. Sadly I had recently separated from my long term girlfriend but we were still good friends and we agreed to still go down together as we’d attended a fair few shows over the years, including some awesome Elvington airshows and the first public display of the newly airworthy Vulcan at Waddington. We stayed at a campsite which I think may have been Flyby which seemed really nice until the utter c*nts over the hedge who seemingly resented the airshow and its campers played loud music all the way through until dawn in an effort to deliberately keep us awake.
Sunday morning came and we schlepped our way from Flyby to the Red entrance, I was still fuming from the dickheads keeping us up the night before and now lugging far too much stuff on shanks pony. My mood lifted a little though as I saw the array of BIG tail fins poking out of the statics. If you don’t get that childlike buzz when you see such things you’ve lost your airshow mojo! Looking back at my pics it seems we plotted up on the crowdline somewhere in Red.
By now I had upgraded my kit and was rocking a Canon 30D and a Canon 100-400mm lens which definitely made a big difference to my results. Yeah yeah, I hear you, you don’t need expensive kit to get good pictures blah blah, just need to have skill but c’mon – you try shooting a fast jet in the distance with a cheap 75mm-300mm zoom and a small buffer on your camera and you’ll soon find your limitations. For most of the Sunday it was dark and gloomy with sporadic rain, sometimes heavy with just the occasional glimpse of sunshine and blue skies. I was still learning how to shoot fully manual and it shows. I appear to have nailed my aperture down to F8 and that was that! Furthermore I seemed to have stayed on ISO 125 all day. Bearing in mind I was often at the long end of that 100-400mm you can imagine how dark my pics were, you can see I’ve really struggled. Back then my old copy of Photoshop CS-whatever had no fancy shadows/highlight tool either!
As shotVery quick and dirty edit with Shadows Highlight tool (and removed dust bunnies)
So actually I’m really enjoying going back through these old pics and bringing back to life some that I’d written off back then by using tools available in my contemporary version of Photoshop. Thanks the Lord I at least had the sense to shoot in RAW.
It looks like the opening act (or at least the first I shot) was a Spanish F-18. I didn’t take many photos, probably not helped by the gloominess. Several years later a Spanish F-18 put on one of the best airshow performances I’ve ever seen, completely outshone the Super Hornet that was also there! After the Hornet came what must have been my first time seeing the Italian Frecce Tricolori team and I really enjoyed their display. Just seeing something other than red Hawks made a nice change, in conjunction with the different coloured smoke, flamboyant showmanship and even more flamboyant commentary.
Again, interesting to revisit photos taken 14 years ago. Whilst tinkering with these I quickly realised my lens, or sensor, or both really were filthy as you will see in the comparison photos below. The dirty one I just deployed dehaze tool in extremis to really show the state of it
The Blue Eagles Army Air Corps helicopter display turned up with Lynx and Apache helicopters and looking back at my pictures the Lynx outshone the Apache in the air!
2009 RIAT also had a Rafale on the menu. Now, I’m not sure but I *think* this was the first time I saw the Rafale at an airshow. I remember seeing it in Take Off magazine in the very late 80s and thought it was a fine looking machine, especially in it’s prototype/pre-prod colours and yes, in the air it proved to be equally impressive but…but…I have never been able to pinpoint why…I just cannot get excited about any Rafale display! People rave about it…YEAH the Rafale’s coming! I always try and watch a Rafale performance with an open mind but I always come away underwhelmed. Does this make me some sort of monster?
2009 was the 100th anniversary of British naval aviation and they made a pretty good do of celebrating it at Fairford with a collection of rotary and fixed wing assets. Last time I saw something like this will have been Middle Wallop circa 1990.
A year after its return to flight we had the Vulcan back at RIAT. I’d last seen it at somewhere like Finningley or Church Fenton in the 90s when it had Goodbye written in the bomb bay. Back then it used to separate your ribs from their intercostal muscles on take off and never failed to impress. On it’s inaugural display in 2008 I’d hyped it up to myself and my girlfriend so much that maybe the actual display was a bit of an anti climax? That was more than made up for by the emotion of the event though, to be fair. The Vulcan at RIAT 2009 was a bit more pacey and seeing it tipped over almost upside down certainly got my attention! Over the years the Vulcan displayed we quickly became “experts” on the differences in how Rumens or Withers flew it. It certainly seemed to me that the former would go for the more jaw dropping performances whereas the latter would showcase his restrained precision. I feel like I could write a lot about the Vulcan right now but I think I’ll save it for another post.
Not only did we get to see the Vulcan getting put through its paces but as an extra bonus it taxied along the runway with a B52 as well. I’ve left the photo deliberately as is (i.e. too dark) as a reminder that this RIAT was pretty dark and moody!
It looks like the final display I took pictures of was Typhoon ZJ924 which got a dramatic take off from the rain soaked runway and also benefited from the moisture heavy air. I will not be calling this ‘spluff’, but there you have it, call it what you will, it’s all over the wings :-D.
RIAT 2009 might not have been perfect but ultimately I really enjoyed it and rather than leaving it another 3 years before returning, I was back the following year. The seed was definitely planted by now! I have subsequently done every show from 2009 onwards apart from 2011 and 2013. Not sure what put me off those years, it will either have been a clash with something else or a poor line up for my tastes. Nowadays I am of the opinion that line up doesn’t matter too much, just go to the bloody airshow and enjoy it for what it is. One day, there won’t be any. Besides, an aeroplane you may be blasé about because you’ve seen it countless times can pull something out of the hat at its next airshow and knock your socks of!!
My first trip to the Royal International Air Tattoo! Myself and good friend Chris decided to head down to Gloucestershire to see one of the world’s biggest military airshows for the first time.
Chris in full avgeek mode
We got digs in a B&B which must not have been near any pubs as we were stuck for food. The hosts didn’t normally do food but very kindly allowed us to join in with their evening meal for a small fee. I also recall there was a swimming pool covered over with a tarp which their cats took great pleasure in scurrying across!
Airshow day! It was spanking hot down at Fairford, I don’t think there was a cloud in the sky all day. I think we plotted up right at the end of what is now Red zone at the Eastern end of the crowdline. I wanted to be right at the front and this was the only place I could do that – I had a lot to learn about these big airshows where getting to the front mean super early starts and defensive elbows! I’m looking at EXIF information and it looks like I was using a Canon 350D chassis with a Canon 75-300mm lens. The zoom lens was alreday rather old and had been bought for my old film camera. My camera at that time was a Canon 300D, an early DSLR known as the Digital Rebel in America. I’d treat myself to it back in 2004 after getting diagnosed with cancer because if you can’t treat yourself then when the f*ck can you?! So it looks like I was borrowing my then girlfriend Debi’s 350D camera, not sure why!
2006 is a long time ago so I’m struggling to recall much of the airshow but there are some highlights that have stuck with me. One of the biggies was seeing the Canberra PR9 at one if it’s last airshow appearances, I’d never seen one in the air before and I know Chris was very keen to see it as well. Most of the pictures I took of it were crap, really underexposed but it’s a testament to Photoshop that I’ve been able to Shadows/Highlight tool the fek out of them to retrieve something usable for this blog. Also of note, the pilot on the day was 61 years old!
This Canberra, XH134, actually got back in the air again in 2013 and flew on the circuit for a couple of years before the inevitable lack of funds grounded it.
I remember being surprised how sprightly this 1940s designed jet was, it took off and climbed at a fair rate of knots! Reminds me of the U2 – first time I saw that take off I expected a gentle climb but it zoomed up like a …well…F104 with the wings of a glider :-D. I’m a bit gutted that my only photos of this impressive machine are a bit gash but really I should just be happy I have any!
Next up from my fading memory, the F15C. Not sure how many times I’d seen an F15 prior to 2006 although I do know I saw an F15I (Israel) somewhere, possibly Waddington in 2001. Anyway this was a cracking display and one of the things that stuck in my memory was the peculiar whine from those big Pratt and Whitneys, you can detect a little bit of it in this person’s vid from the day at 3:33 secs in
Again, my photos really don’t do it justice but better than nothing
RIAT 2006 was the first time I saw the Osprey. This early machine was with VMX22, the Marine Tiltrotor Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron. I was excited to see it and thought it was going to be the highlight of the airshow
How wrong was I! The Russians turned up and stole the show with a display that I still rank as one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen. They brought over the MiG 29 OVT which was done out in a stunning paint job and equipped with thrust vectoring. It took off and proceeded to do real filthy stuff, things you have no right seeing a fixed wing aeroplane do. With its wobbly nozzles seemingly pulsing and quivering this machine performed backflips like a gymnast pivoting around the horizontal bar and fell out of the sky with the pilot still completely under control. At times I was just staring up into the sky slack jawed. The nearest I’ve seen since then was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the F22 but even that couldn’t quite match the lunacy of this routine!
Again my pictures are woefully inadequate so check out this Wings TV video on Youtube
2006 was my first RIAT but I don’t think I had enough time to fully appreciate the size of it. Nor did I appreciate enough the diversity of the kit I was seeing. I’d pay good money to see a PR9, MIG29OVT, F15, Harrier, B1 etc. I wanted to go 2008 but couldn’t – as it turned out I didn’t miss much as the show was cancelled because of waterlogged car parks but I was still jealous of those who got to see the first (practice) demo of the F22.
